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The contractions started at 7,000 feet. I was on a plane from San Francisco to Chicago to pitch a new client for our advertising agency. Twenty-three weeks pregnant with my second child, I had just been promoted to vice president and was eager to prove my worth. My career was on fire. So was my belly.
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At first, I didn’t even realize it had happened. My sixteen-year-old daughter was playing goalie for her premier soccer team at a college scouting tournament during Thanksgiving break this past November. As a player from the other team charged the goal, by daughter went in for the save. They both missed the ball and hit each other head-on. The other player fell down and then got up and brushed herself off. My daughter stumbled but didn’t fall. She then managed to capture the ball and save the goal....more

“I’m gonna getcha,” cried my son who had just arrived home from his first fall at college. It was Christmas and our extended family was gathered to celebrate. He, this newly formed man, was on all fours scrambling after his toddler cousin. Our collective laughter spiraled the room as the new-to-walking little boy mimicked Frankenstein in his efforts to get away. My son scooped his cousin up and razzed the baby’s belly creating fits of giggles for them both.
Later, my son asked, “Mom, do you think I’ll be a good father?”...more

We’d spent the day cleaning his room, sorting his belongings, and beginning the long slow journey toward separation. My son was heading off to college and I was trying to make peace with it. The “It” here being his future.
So when the daily mail brought a magazine with an article asking “Are the Millennials the Screwed Generation?”, it was hard to ignore. After we both read it, my son turned to me. “Do you think we’re screwed?”...more

It’s graduation week around town. We’re hearing lots of speeches about new beginnings, following your dreams, and choosing roads less traveled. Students are told repeatedly “it’s all ahead of you.” But for those of us with children in cap and gown, it’s not all about the future. For us, it’s also about the past....more

That kind of switch and bait probably didn’t occur to most of the 76 students who were recently accepted and then summarily rejected by Vassar College. A computer glitch, just the kind my own son worried about, sent 122 early decision candidates letters of acceptance. For 46 of them, the news was accurate; they had been accepted. For the remaining students, the computer system, in fact the entire system, had failed....more

Eighteen years ago this month, my first child arrived six weeks ahead of schedule. While he was hooked up to tubes and toasting away in the ICU’s isolette, I spent those first days as a mother praying for him and reading Annie Lamott’s memoir, Operating Instructions. Between the laughter and the tears, I was hoping to find that elusive “how-to” manual for mothering....more

Sometime in the next few months, my son will receive an acceptance letter to college. And with it, a bill. A big bill. A bill so big it will shape his future, defining what he does in the classroom and after graduation because the schools to which he is applying will cost him (and us, his parents) upwards of half a million dollars.Which begs the question, is it worth it?...more